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EG1003 Project Milestone Presentation Format

The semester-long project is one of the most important components of EG1003,
so it's important that you do an honest assessment of where you stand on the
project, and that you receive input from the teaching staff on how your are
doing. Therefore, several milestone presentations are scheduled during the term
to achieve this

In some ways, the milestone presentations are similar to the lab
presentations. You will present with the rest of your team, like the labs, and
much of the material you present will be similar. However, the intent of this
presentation is much different. In this case, you're not presenting an activity
you've already completed, but are showing how you're progressing on an activity
that lasts into the future. Also, the emphasis will change from how you present
your findings to how you present your progress, and convince the audience that
you will be successful in your project, or at least where you stand in
completing it.

Because of this, the presentation will emphasize cost and schedule issues
rather than technical issues, although technical issues will certainly be
covered. This will cause the agenda of the presentation to change, and the
issues you cover to be different as well.

You will only have about five minutes to do this presentation, so be sure to
be brief.

Contents

Title Slide

This is one of the slides that you have in common with the lab presentation,
and the information is similar. The slide should contain the following information:

The Milestone number

The course identification (EG1003) and section you're in

The date of the presentation

The names of the members of your group, usually in alphabetical order

The type of project you're doing

If one of the members has done the overwhelming majority of the work in
preparing the milestone, their name should come first, followed by the other
team members.

All this information should be on individual lines, centered.

Like the lab presentation, the presenters should stand in the same order that
their names appear on the title slide.

Agenda

Like the Overview slide in the lab presentation, this tells the audience what
subjects will be covered. It consists of a list of bulleted items:

Project Objective

Background Information

Technical Design Description

Cost Estimate

Project Schedule

Summary

Like the lab presentation, each of the preceding bullets will become a
section in the presentation that follows.

Project Objective

This slide tells your audience what project you're doing, and how you plan to
approach it. It also discusses issues that affect your standing by trying to
achieve bonus points.

The slide should cover the following topics:

A quick description of your project, i.e., are you doing a bomb robot, a
train guidance system, etc.

Your overall approach. For example, for a bomb robot, what path you plan to
travel. For the train system, do you plan to solve the entire problem at one
time or in pieces. For the retrieval system, which balls will you pick up for
how many points, deposited in which bin.

What extra credit points you plan to try to achieve if any. These points
raise the project risk, so it's important that you address this.

Background Information

This consists of a quick description of the mission. You can usually get this
from the project description in the online manual. You should tailor the mission
to what your project does. For example, if your solution is fast, stress speed.
If your project is inexpensive, stress price. For the earlier milestones, a
simple mission statement will be sufficient, i.e. a paraphrasing of what's in
the online manual. For later milestones, you should be more specific.

Technical Project Description

You've explained what you're trying to accomplish, and why. Now it's time to
give more detail. This part of the presentation will typically consist of
several slides. The first slide will discuss how your project works in more
detail. For Milestone 1, this will continue the theme you gave in the project
objective, giving a little more detail. For the later milestones, you should be
much more specific.

For Milestone 1, you should give a sketch of your project, if appropriate. In
later milestones, you should show a picture of your project as well, and
describe any changes from the sketch. For milestones after Milestone 2, you
should describe what changed in the project implementation from earlier
milestones.

You should review the online manual for any tasks that were to be performed
for this milestone. These tasks should be presented here.

Cost Estimate

This is one of the most important parts of the presentation. It should be a
single slide showing how much your project will cost, presented as an Excel
spreadsheet that's embedded on your slide. What this means is that you should
NOT show an Excel screen shot, but have a table that looks professional.

For many projects, your list will be long, possibly more than can fit on one
slide. If this is true, you can just show the major cost items (for example, for
robots, the RCX block and motors are expensive) and put the rest in one or more
"miscellaneous" categories. Frequently one category is enough, but if it looks
too large (usually more than 20% of the price), you can break it out by function
(e.g., grappling arm), or by type of component( e.g., technic, brick,
etc.).

A critical item in this cost should be labor. If you're not sure how to
calculate labor, there is a section on this in the online manual that will tell
you how to calculate it.

The overall cost, which is the sum of all the preceding components, should be
in the bottom right corner of the table.

After Milestone 1, you should have a second slide that explains any changes
from earlier milestone presentations and why they occurred.

Project Schedule

This is another critical section, and it's important that it be presented
clearly. First, you should have prepared a project schedule by the start of your
milestone presentations. If you're not sure how to do this, there is a section
on how to do a schedule and also a Skill Builder on Microsoft Project. You
should read them both. One of the key items is to have a schedule that shows at
least 20 detailed tasks, plus an appropriate number of summary tasks (also known
as rollup tasks), plus the milestones themselves. The schedule presented can be
extracted from Microsoft Project by using the "copy picture" icon in Microsoft
Project (the icon that looks like a camera in the center of the screen at the
top). The schedule you see in Microsoft Project usually won't fit on a single
slide, so you'll have to reformat it before doing the "copy picture". Between
the task table and the Gantt Chart, there's a bar. "Drag" the bar so that you
only have the task descriptions, without things like the duration, start and end
dates, resources, predecessors, successors, etc. If you drag the bar so that
only the descriptions show, and have the correct time line, you should be able
to present the schedule on a single slide. On the Gantt chart you present, all
tasks should show the name of the responsible individual.

On any project, some tasks will be late. Therefore, your presentation should
also show progress bars, and explain any late tasks. Note that being late on
some tasks is not necessarily bad – in fact a project where everything is
running on time will probably raise the suspicions of any manager. What is
important, however, is that you show that you know you're late, and also present
a "get well" plan that explains how you will still be able to complete the
project on schedule.

For presentations after Milestone 1, you should explain any changes to the
schedule.

Summary

This is your last slide, and is an overall assessment of where you stand. The
first bullet should be a quick summary of how you think you're doing. Some
typical bullets you might use are:

We're on schedule (really?)

We're running late, but can catch up (the most likely)

We're dead (sure to ignite an spirited discussion from your faculty member
about what you plan to do, other than drop the course)

The second bullet is an assessment on how you're doing on cost. For Milestone
1, and assessment of how realistic you think your cost estimate is. For later
milestones, you would note whether there was a cost increase or decrease and
why. For all milestones except the last one, you should also forecast whether
you think the cost will increase or decrease in future presentations.

Finally, the last bullets should highlight what tasks you plan to perform by
the next milestone.

Conclusion

The preceding slides should give your Recitation TA and faculty member a good
idea of where you stand. They will give you helpful advice on how to be
successful. For each milestone, you should also review the online manual to
insure you've achieved what's required of you for each milestone, and presented
the necessary information.

By following this format, it is highly likely that you will be successful in your
project.